where Liese told me about the Delurking thread.

Yay!

The month is almost over so I guess I should pop in before it's too late. I'm not a lurker, just a longtime Buffista who goes through extended periods of near-, sometimes total-silence. The phenomenon is not new. Perhaps going to a college almost entirely centered around discussion (at the time we had one required paper per year; I took two tests in four years, both pass/fail & which we were required to take as many times as needed to pass. Passed both on first attempt.) was a mistake. But I met a lot of great people, & it led to my marriage and career, so as far as mistakes go it was a good one.

I started posting on Table Talk when the monthly book group was reading Absalom, Absalom! The guy leading the discussion thought I was putting too much emphasis on race in the novel. Ten years later I still don't know what he was talking about. Anyway, I migrated over to the Buffy thread. (I don't think there was a separate Angel discussion.)

During the second season of Angel I noted the resemblance of Lorne, known to us at the time (and the way I still think of him) as GGG, the Gay Green Guy, to Losers' Lounge singer Sean Altman. It turned out that a few other posters were Losers' Lounge fans & eventually we went to the Roxy Music LL. I think that was the first F2F. msbelle was there, along with Misha, & Martha C. There were a couple others, too. Jesse, I think. A couple weeks later we had the first episode-centered get-together at Fiona's.

My big news is that we adopted a baby this summer: Thelonious Sorel Boucher. (Cf. my bio in the David Smay-edited Lost In The Grooves. It's searchable so you can see it on Amazon, but you should buy the book.) And the punchline, spoiler-fonted for dramatic effect: the birthmother named him Angelus. Not a complete coincidence. My wife mentioned my love of Buffy & Angel & my Buffista friendships in our profile, and birthmom is also a fan.

A belated congrats to Nilly & her very, very lucky husband. I'm sure there are other belated congrats & condolences to send out but I should probably get back to work.

I started posting on Table Talk when the monthly book group was reading Absalom, Absalom! The guy leading the discussion thought I was putting too much emphasis on race in the novel. Ten years later I still don't know what he was talking about.

Uh.

Hi!

Joe, long time no post. Dani, Hey...

Joe, your son is adorable! Congratulations!

Joe, that is one beautiful little dude you have there!

Joe! Long time no post! And congrats on the absolutely adorable kid!

Hi Joe! I just sqealed "baaaaaaaby" out loud in my office. He is one cute baby!

Joe! Can't see the baby b/c I'm on a bberry, but congrats!!

And, oh, before it closes:

Hi! I'm Liese. I was part of the Fool For Love delurk in 4 back on TT. I started the 5x5 thread, back when anybody could, and in doing so made a punctuation gaffe by putting the period after "porn" outside of the quotation marks, British style. This error traumatized me for all subsequent life and to this day I try to avoid ending a sentence with a quote. I also used to use a thesaurus before every post because I wanted you all to like me and think I was smart. I'm much lazier now, and I'm sure your opinion of my intellect has suffered greatly because of this.

I'm a stompy so at one point believed I should read every message ever posted on our boards. Hah. Haha. But I'm still pretty prolific these days. You can definitely find me in Write, Tech, Non-Fic TV, & Boxed Set, as well as Natter and periodically Bitches.

I live in the high desert in the American southwest where I did in fact leave it all to bring rock & roll to the needy. We used to be programmers back in the midwest but now my SO & I run our own non-profit which is primarily a traveling music school that works on the Navajo & Apache reservations. We're in our eighth year of it now. It is awesome and heartbreaking and we feel very lucky to be able to do it.

I'm married to a totally awesome guy who loves music and hockey, no kids, one very charismatic dog named after a horse. We just built the house of our dreams, an endeavor which swallowed up the good part of a couple of years and a whole lotta house-loves-carrots posts.

Oh, yeah, and I'm a Christian with anarchist leanings, which puts me as an outlier on the political spectrum here, ostensibly an independent, most notably visible when I voted for Nader in the Bush/Kerry election in a swing state. Oops. I voted for your guy this time, though.

I discovered on this board that I'm a subtaster, so I love all the extreme flavors mentioned. In addition, I also eat dry seaweed and raw fish and a lot of rice, plus kahlua pig and portugeuse sausage and poi, all of which may lend a clue to the last demographic piece, which is that I'm Japanese-American via Hawaii and damn proud of it.

I had the best intentions of making this short, but am apparently a tad egomaniacal to boot.

I cannot say enough how truly enriched my life has been through knowing and talking to this fantastic group of women and men all over the globe. You are a phenomenal bunch of people and I am a better (and much more well-informed) person for having known you. So thanks!